Crypts and Things Lives

I haven’t mentioned the role-playing game Crypts and Things here lately (C&T is a ‘swords-and-sorcery’ variant of Swords and Wizardry, to which I contributed some of my house rules).  But that doesn’t mean that nothing has been happening with the game!

D101 Games already has one adventure out for C&T, Blood of the Dragon.  Moreover, Newt Newport has lined up a “Crypts and Things Masters’ Series” of modules, with contributions from a number of UK authors.  The first module in the series, Temple of Urshruuk by Rik Kershaw-Moore, is now in production.

Things are stirring in the Crypt…

A positive RuneQuest 6 Review

... has been posted over at RPG.net.

It's a succinct yet informative review, well worth reading if you're curious about the latest (and best!) version of the game.

The reviewer is Shannon Appelcline, who interviewed the authors of RQ6, Lawrence Whitaker and Pete Nash, last month.

Dead But Dreaming

I recently obtained the legendary anthology of Mythos-inspired tales, Dead But Dreaming, edited by Kevin Ross and Keith Herber (two names that should be familiar to any fan of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game).

Originally produced in 2002 by Dark Tales Publications, only 75 copies were printed before Dark Tales closed down.  Thankfully, Miskatonic River Press republished the anthology (with some corrections and a new afterword) in 2008.

I cannot praise this collection highly enough, and strongly recommend it to any fan of Lovecraft’s (and Clark Ashton Smith’s) work.  Indeed, I enjoyed Dead But Dreaming so much that I just started reading Dead But Dreaming 2.

RuneQuest 6 Interview

Over at RPG.net, Shannon Appelcline interviews the authors of RuneQuest 6 (and the earlier Legend/MRQII system), Lawrence Whitaker ('Loz') and Pete Nash.  Read the whole thing here.

Call of Cthulhu Radio Play

I’m a huge fan of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society.  I’ve enjoyed their radio plays, ‘The Dunwich Horror,’ ‘At the Mountains of Madness,’ and ‘The Shadow out of Time.’  And their silent film version of ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ is, I think, the best Lovecraft film ever produced.

So it’s great that they have produced a radio play version of ‘The Call of Cthulhu.’  Watch the silent film … and then listen to the radio play (or vice versa).  Both your visual and aural senses can experience the horror of R’lyeh – just not at the same time!  That’s probably a good thing for one’s sanity…

(Check out the cool trailer here.)

Second Breakfast at Denny’s

Is this a cruel trick from Sauron?

io9 reports:

In what is certainly one of the most mind-boggling-but-sort-of-logical marketing campaigns we've ever seen, The Hobbit has teamed up with Denny's to bring you Radagast's Red Velvet Pancake Puppies, Bilbo's Berry Smoothie, Gandalf's Gobble Melt, "The Ring" Burger, and Frodo's Pot Roast. 

Yes, Denny's is serving a heart-attack-inducing rendition of Tolkien's Second Breakfast. And we're not sure what the "Lonely Mountain Treasure" is, but we're pretty sure it goes well with a hit of pipeweed.

While I’ve always dreamed of “building my own Hobbit slam” (no, not really – the one that is pictured looks thoroughly disgusting), I’ve always associated the food at Denny’s restaurants more with orcs than with hobbits.

Hobbit Coins

From this Salon.com article:

New Zealand, the backdrop of sweeping cinematic scenes from “The Lord of the Rings” and the upcoming trilogy “The Hobbit,” is issuing a series of Hobbit coins.
...
It looks pretty much like a gold coin but with a rim inscribed, in both English and Dwarvish, with the words ‘Middle-earth – New Zealand.’

Rolemaster Public Playtest

The new folks in charge of ICE are conducting a public playtest for the forthcoming version of Rolemaster.

I have many fond memories of playing Rolemaster 2e -- and, even more so, MERP -- decades ago (mainly during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and most recently in 1999).  But I think that ship has sailed for me.  (Of course, I would not rule out checking out the final product, once it's available.)

Hobbit History

I found this to be an interesting article on the history of The Hobbit.  I already knew about the revision that Tolkien made to the original version of the story in order to render it consistent with The Lord of the Rings.  But this final point made in the article was new to me (in the sense that I never had noticed its significance before):

So thorough was Tolkien’s assimilation of his earlier work that even the revision of The Hobbit itself was incorporated into the story. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf and Frodo talk about the fact that Bilbo’s book (published as The Hobbit) contained a false account of the story of his finding of the Ring. Gandalf explains that the Ring had already begun to take hold of Bilbo, and when he told the story in his book, he made up the part about being given the Ring by Gollum in order to bolster his personal claim to it. The “true” story, the revised version, was only discovered later, but copies of the original could still be found in circulation.

The article also includes a nice gallery of Tolkien’s art (including the piece above).

Cthulhu Canada: The Sanatorium

August 1923 -- Toronto


The investigators – Prof. Nigel Blackthorne and Dr. Pierre Rioux – spend a full month on leave from their respective jobs, recovering from the wounds, both physical and psychic, acquired from their investigation into the curious case of Mr. Corbitt.

During this time, Pierre receives a letter from one of his former professors from medical school, Dr. Aldous Brewer.  In the letter, Brewer invites Pierre to visit him at his experimental sanatorium on Mid-Lake Island (which, as its name implies, lies in the middle of Lake Ontario).  Desirous to get away from the city for a few days, Pierre decides to accept the invitation, and convinces Nigel to come along with him.

Pierre and Nigel take a motorboat, controlled by an ancient Australian mariner who now works for Dr. Brewer, to Mid-Lake Island.  Once there, they discover that something has gone horribly wrong at the sanatorium.  All of the staff appears to have been slain – including Pierre’s former teacher, Dr. Brewer!  Much to their distress, the investigators discern that Brewer apparently was slain as part of some kind of dark, blasphemous ritual.

Nigel is puzzled to discover several books on ancient Egypt, including several newspaper clippings, in Brewer’s library.  Apparently these books and clippings are related to one of the inmates, ‘Darlene,’ who had been found years earlier in the backstreets of Montreal, with no memory of her identity.

The remaining inmates are attended to by Pierre as best he can.  Investigating for the rest of the night and throughout the next day, while ensuring that the inmates come to no harm, Pierre and Nigel learn that a terrible creature from another world inadvertently has been summoned by one of the inmates, an especially sensitive but schizophrenic poet.  The investigators discover that the creature sucked the ‘life force’ from the sanatorium’s maid, leaving her corpse a withered husk.

While exploring the rest of the island, Pierre and Nigel come across a rock with strange carvings, and disturbingly recent blood stains.  They also explore a lighthouse.  Much to their dismay, the lighthouse proves to be occupied by the creature that previously ravaged the sanatorium!  The creature is a roiling mass of gassy spheres, nearly transparent in the summer daylight, with a shifting, oily iridescence.

Barely escaping with their lives, the investigators return to the sanatorium.  There they discover, in the maintenance shed, one of the sanatorium’s former orderlies, Mr. Johnson, standing over the sacrificed body of one of the inmates, engraving bloody eldritch symbols onto her flesh.  Horrified, Pierre and Nigel shoot Johnson dead, and infer that he had fallen under the control of the creature from another world.

Following various leads from their investigations, and especially the notes of Dr. Brewer, Pierre decides to hypnotize Darlene, believing that she may have submerged memories from a previous life relevant to their present dire situation.  They learn that one of her personalities in an earlier life was that of the Egyptian princess ‘Annephis,’ a priestess of the cult of Bast.  During her time, Annephis turned back a horrific race of beings referred to only as ‘Those Who Wait.’  Annephis learned from her goddess how to destroy the creatures, and constructed many Elder Signs with which she and her followers drove the creatures into the Nile where they perished.  With the help of ‘Annephis,’ the investigators construct their own Elder Sign.

Nigel and Pierre then debate what to do.  They decide to load up a wheelbarrow with cans of gasoline, and return to the lighthouse.  They spread the gasoline on the stairs and floor of the lighthouse.  Igniting the gasoline, the eldritch creature is forced from the building.  Unfortunately, one of the creature’s pseudopods hits Pierre on the head, scarring his face with burning acid.  The pitiable physician collapses unconscious, his life force rapidly draining away.  Fortunately, the pseudopod withdraws in reaction to Nigel’s brandishing of the Elder Sign.  After a terrible struggle, Nigel uses the Elder Sign to force the creature over the side of the cliff.  Upon falling into the lake, the creature is destroyed, as fresh water is one of its (surprisingly mundane) weaknesses.

Nigel returns to sanatorium, bringing the unconscious Pierre with him in the wheelbarrow.  Unable to leave the island (as the motorboat had been destroyed by the mad Mr. Johnson), and lacking any way to communicate with the outside world, the investigators wait for the police to arrive.  In the meantime they bury the bodies left by the creature’s wave of destruction, and take care of the surviving inmates.

The investigators’ time on Mid-Lake Island proved to be anything but the idyllic escape that they had hoped it would be!

Fortunately, the subsequent two years proved to be far more prosaic for Nigel and Pierre…